Autonomous driving is a complicated task with high demands on knowledge of the environment. Changeableness of a previously mapped out road due to road works, accidents etc., and poorly marked roads, may make autonomous driving difficult and risky. To be able to handle such circumstances the autonomous vehicle could be equipped with more advanced sensing equipment, or require manual intervention. However, in both cases the gains made from driving autonomously are then reduced giving higher costs of transportation.
For example, in U.S. Pat. No. 8,509,982 zone driving is described where rules of a zone may require an autonomous vehicle to alert a driver of that vehicle. The vehicle may require the driver to take control of the steering, acceleration, deceleration, etc.
Wireless communication like vehicle to infrastructure (V2I) communication or vehicle to vehicle (V2V) communication gives the possibility to know road conditions and traffic conditions in advance. Autonomous vehicles may make use of this technology in order to get access to data in order to better plan their journey.
For example, in EP2202601 a method to conduct two vehicles is described, one unmanned slave-vehicle and one master vehicle. The slave-vehicle use information from the master vehicle to navigate. The information may be transmitted e.g. via radio communication.
US20130090802 illustrates an autonomous vehicle that is conducted by means of a leader vehicle. The autonomous vehicle may receive waypoints from the leader vehicle via wireless communication. In U.S. Pat. No. 8,880,272 an autonomous vehicle is shown that may calculate a trajectory based on two trajectories of two other vehicles and thereby avoid e.g. a road work.